Eye - 18 March 2016

Voltaire's history of Friends

by Eye 18th March 2016

The curious attention of Voltaire

The French Enlightenment writer Voltaire is best known for his satirical novella Candide. He also penned, however, a series of Letters on the English. Four of the twenty-four letters, written during Voltaire’s exile in England, were on the subject of Quakers.

In his very first sentence he explains that ‘the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a people were worthy [of] the attention of the curious…